1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to a multi-exercise system. More specifically, this invention is directed to a portable multi-exercise system by which a user may exercise different portions of his or her body by making a simple adjustment to the system, appropriately re-positioning his or her body relative to the system, and performing the required exercise movements thereafter.
With the current widespread awareness of the significant health benefits afforded by regular exercise, daily exercise has become a matter of high priority to many members of the general public. A major obstacle faced by most in their endeavor to follow a regular exercise regimen is the lack of ready access to equipment that enable them to exercise different portions of the body. Ideally, such access would be gained through an in-home gym facility equipped with various exercise machines and implements for exercising different portions of the body. For most, however, financial, spatial, and other constraints preclude a realization of such an in-home facility.
Versatile machines reconfigurable to enable various exercises thereon exist. Those machines, however, typically include complex arrangements of mechanical parts and require complicated series of adjustments to reconfigure the machine for different exercises. Where such complexity is not present, the machines are either undesirably limiting in the number of different exercises that may be performed on them, or are physically of such substantial mass and dimensional extent that they may be fully utilized only in certain wide-open areas of a given home, and are hardly movable, let alone portable. An effective substitute for a fully-equipped in-home gym facility that is versatile, simple, and portable enough to offer a user optimum access to significant and regular exercise of the variety and quality he or she would be able to perform in such a gym facility is therefore not realized in existing reconfigurable machines.
2. Prior Art
Multi-exercise systems and methods of operation are known in the prior art. In particular, the closest prior art known includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,074,551 and 4,666,149, which are generally directed to reconfigurable systems for exercising various portions of the user's body. Additional prior art known to Applicant includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,777,439; 2,855,199; 3,721,438; 4,208,049; 4,226,415; 4,328,964; 4,492,375; 4,500,089; 4,546,971; 4,568,078; 4,231,568; 4,311,305; 4,322,071; 4,349,192; 4,349,193; 4,349,194; 4,465,274; 4,621,807; 4,666,151; 4,784,384; 4,902,006; and, Netherlands Patent 8005681.
None of the prior art multi-exercise systems provide for the versatility, simplicity, and portability in the unique manner provided by the subject portable multi-exercise system. In the prior art systems shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,666,149 and 5,074,551, an adjustable rotation actuation bar is employed; however, the systems embody a number of features that render them significantly different from the subject portable multi-exercise system. First, the systems are quite substantial in mass and dimensional extent. As such, they may be re-located by a single user only with great coordination and effort and, therefore, are certainly not portable. Second, the basic configuration in each system is such that a user may not exhaust the full capabilities of the system without constantly having to re-adjust or temporarily remove a bench assembly. In a practical sense, then, those systems are not as versatile as the subject portable multi-exercise system wherein no such cumbersome manipulations--likely to dissuade a user from performing particular exercises--are necessary to fully utilize the system. Finally, the exercise mechanisms of those prior art systems lack the simplicity found in the subject portable multi-exercise system in that user-applied force in those systems is exerted on the resistive force mechanism along a fixed linear direction, the user-actuated rotation having been translated to linear motion by a pulley device. Hence, the structural requirements of such exercise mechanisms require more mechanical parts in those systems than in the subject portable multi-exercise system, and obviate the need found in the subject portable multi-exercise system for a pivotal coupling between a resistive force-providing tension member and a rotation transfer member.